Passionate About Helping the Community
Allison Terracio represents Richland County Council District 5, which includes St. Andrews, The Vista, Five Points, Shandon, Wales Garden, Rosewood, Edgewood, Historic Waverly, and more. She is mom to Van, wife to Nate, and an Advanced Coach with the Gaia Leadership Project, which cultivates leaders from the ground up to advance new models of leadership.
Her hometown is Trenton, Ky., population 400, give or take. She attended Centre College, where she majored in Biochemistry and minored in Spanish. During her final year at Centre she met Nate, and they bonded over their shared love of both chemistry and the arts. Right after college, she and Nate moved to Brooklyn, where she worked for The Bank of New York (now BNY Mellon), where she worked with Asset Backed Securities and Municipal Bonds.
After experiencing 9/11 in NYC, Allison began the study and practice of yoga. She felt passionately that she should take this practice back home to Kentucky. She bought an existing yoga studio and quickly learned the power of community. It was her community that kept her small business going, and it was for her community that she existed. She was constantly in awe of the relationships that blossomed and grew from offering a ‘third space’, a space that was not just work or home.
During her pregnancy, labor, and delivery, she was supported by a doula, a woman who ‘mothers the mother’ in childbirth. This experience led her to learn more about the status of maternal and infant outcomes in the United States and to become a doula for other women herself.
In the fall of 2016, having made the choice to move to Nate's hometown of Columbia, Allison learned about the issues facing South Carolinians. She felt called to get deeply involved in building community through meeting neighbors and organizing for progressive causes. She was inspired to run for County Council after seeing local governments step up to protect our environment, create policies to ensure our law enforcement officers are acting in the interest of public safety, and create opportunities for students to learn and communities to thrive.
